


All My Precious Secrets

by tomato_greens



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Future Fic, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-31
Updated: 2011-12-31
Packaged: 2017-10-28 14:16:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/308728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomato_greens/pseuds/tomato_greens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Professor X's students were oblivious, and also one other time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All My Precious Secrets

**Author's Note:**

> Originally on the X-Men: First Class kink meme [here](http://xmen-firstkink.livejournal.com/6437.html?thread=10841381#t10841381). The radio stations are real, but I like Q104.3 much more than Hank does. I kinda made up the years based on the comics, but it's all a little handwavey, especially after the '80s - please feel free to ignore it if you like!

1\. HANK MCCOY - 1963

Hank's never prided himself on being particularly observant outside of the laboratory––the vagaries of a tangle of wires, the ghost-smell of sulfur after an explosion, these are the things that require his vast and potent focus; the rest, as far as he's concerned, is usually just so much trivia––but he's been trying this new thing lately where he pays attention to other people's needs.

"It's in the name of self-improvement," he finds himself telling the Professor one evening, a little wired from fifteen hours of pure creation. The spark-and-brushfire of invention is a delicate process, one that eats up his days, though, of course, he lets it willingly. As hard as it was to admit, he's realized, now that he's more used to them, that the claws are much better for precision work than his clumsy fingertips ever were as long as he's careful with the razored points.

"Hank," says the Professor, sighing, sounding distant, one hand fiddling with the ubiquitous chess piece he tends to carry around with him, a black rook. "Hank, as I have always told you, you are magnificent without trying to change yourself any more."

"Well, yes," Hank says, "you have said that."

"There's nothing wrong with being proud," he continues, looking past Hank's shoulder and appearing more upset than Hank thinks the situation really warrants. Who knew his self-esteem meant so much?

He desperately casts about trying to fix it; when Charles Xavier is upset, it rarely ends well to anyone. "But I'm more––I mean––it's less trying to change myself than, uh, trying to be better at––well, I mean, we all miss them, you know, and sometimes I find myself wishing that Raven and I––well, not that you'd want to hear about _that_ , but––Professor?"

"Hmmm?" he says, tilting his head up and looking at Hank searchingly. "Yes, of course, being more thoughtful to those around you has never been a bad idea, Hank, but you must never be afraid to be yourself."

"Right," Hank agrees, "I'm just going to––" and leaves before it gets any more awkward. The Professor is a genius and a man Hank looks up to, someone he always _will_ look up to, but sometimes he gets a little intense about his students' well-being, too intense even for the students themselves. Jesus, he thinks, and goes to harangue Alex into promising him a trial of the newest design.

 

2\. JEAN GREY - 1966

She finds the battered old box by accident, tucked under a stack of books, and curiosity gets the better of her; it's not like there's a lock on it or anything, she reasons, and carefully extricates it using a gentle wisp of power.

She takes off the lid and pauses for a moment; whatever she was expecting, it wasn't Polaroids, that's for sure.

She flips through the faded photos. They're mostly full of people she doesn't know, a pretty blonde woman in a very short skirt, a usually-frowning man who, weirdly, has a chin that looks faintly familiar, a few achingly awkward shots of a teenager in a lab coat and someone who turns out to be a younger Alex when she squints a little, two riotous snaps of Sean mid-flight. It takes a while before she recognizes the appealingly sweet-looking man with very blue eyes and an objectively unfortunate haircut who occasionally pops up as her very own Professor X, though to be fair, the wheelchair's absence makes it harder.

It's really a pity that the Professor doesn't have any of the unruly brown hair left, Jean thinks idly, because he's not an unattractive man otherwise. The Professor's still a bit soft around the edges, his face only just settling into its planes, but––

"Jean?" she hears, or maybe it's _Jean?_ inside her head, hard to tell sometimes, and guiltily stuffs the pile back into the box.

"Yes?" she calls back, crossing her fingers.

The Professor rolls in. No luck, then, she thinks, and lets her hand go lax. "Jean, I was just looking for you, I had the most marvelous idea for––what’s that were you looking at?"

He doesn't sound angry, exactly, or even disappointed, just rather shocked, which is pretty shocking in and of itself. Jean fortifies herself mentally and shrugs as nonchalantly as she can. "I found some old pictures by accident," she explains, "I was just looking through them."

The Professor wheels forward and holds out a hand. It is, she is a little frightened to see, shaking, possibly with cold-blooded rage. She finds herself wishing she could break through his shields just to figure out what's going on. "May I?" he asks.

"Well, they're yours," Jean points out, impish, trying to defuse the situation even though she's officially out of her depth now, and hands him the whole shebang.

"Thank you," he says. His voice is no hint whatsoever, as calm and blankly warm as it usually is. He opens the box with more care than she would expect for such a ratty specimen, and breathes out lingeringly. It is an oddly tender sound, especially since Jean is still certain there's a lecture to be had in her near future.

But he's still not paying attention to her, not really, flicking through the photos like they're paint chips, face impassive. He stops partway through and pulls one out, eyebrows raised, then places it back down and closes the box, turning his gaze towards her. Jean feels herself flush.

He smiles, then, more disarming than usual. "I think we can talk about this another day, don't you?" he asks, kindly, and at her grateful nod he places the box back on the table where she'd originally set it. "Wash up for dinner, we'll talk about the training then," he says, and, over his shoulder as he leaves, "If you'd be so kind as to put that away when you're done with it," which just makes her face go redder, she's sure.

But she can't help herself; once he's gone, she peeks in the box one last time, eyeing the photo the Professor singled out. It's one of him, a friendly arm around the man with the chin, both of them standing for some inexplicable reason in front of the really huge satellite that is still visible some miles off the east side of the Xavier property. They're smiling, or at least the Professor is, widely, without reserve; the other man has a small, vicious grin, like––she casts around for a suitable comparison––a shark or something, but it seems genuine for all that.

Jean can't remember the last time she saw the Professor touch somebody with such cheerful abandon, if she ever has: he's a man for whom control is as easy and necessary as breathing, or so she always thought. Whatever happened then, she thinks ruefully, it's not going to get her out of a well-meaning speech about the importance of privacy and her own self-control, and she fits the box back into the recesses of the bookshelf without thinking anything more about it.

 

3\. KURT WAGNER - 1975

Somehow, somewhere along the way, Kurt gets into the habit of carrying a St. Christopher medal with him. He doesn't wear it around his neck, of course; only the foolhardy expect faith to protect them from grasping, tearing hands in the heat of battle, and Kurt has found all the world's a battlefield when you're a mutant––but he keeps it in a pocket here, a sock there, a familiar, safe token to help him focus when nothing else will.

He's twisting it between his fingers late one night when he can't get to sleep, wandering aimlessly along the Mansion's hallways, when it seems to want to pull itself very gently towards the Professor's study, where he can see a stripe of light streaking out from under the closed door.

That's odd, Kurt thinks, a little alarmed, and lets himself be led.

He's just reaching to knock when the the medal abruptly drops its scant weight fully back onto his fingertips, where he's still got the chain twisted, and his heart leaps into his throat––he pushes open the door to the study without preamble, only to find the Professor sitting alone, face in hand, profile limned softly by the lamp behind him, the night wind blowing fragrantly through the open window.

"Professor?" Kurt ventures, and though the Professor doesn't startle, Kurt can see the moment the line of his back stiffens. He thought he was safe alone, Kurt realizes, and immediately feels guilty. "Sorry, I thought I––I don't know, heard something, or felt something, I suppose."

The Professor turns toward him and smiles. "No need to apologize," he says, his voice uncharacteristically rough despite his amicable expression. "I was just talking to an old friend."

"Is everything, uh, all right?" Kurt asks, not sure what to say; there barely feels like there's room for a breath between them, never mind a joke, like Kurt's disturbed something sacred.

The Professor holds up his hands. "Oh, yes, of course, just...the road of life is often a long and difficult one, and I was remembering things that are perhaps better left untouched."

Kurt nods, twining the medal's chain more firmly between his fingers; he knows about that kind of thing, much as he prefers not to dwell on it. "Yes," he agrees, for lack of anything more useful to say.

The Professor's smile grows a little wider, a little less––Gott, it had nearly made him look young, and isn't that a thought Kurt would rather not follow to its conclusion––a little less vulnerable, ugh, and beckons him forward. "Come on," he says, "I know what to do on nights like these. What do you say to a hot chocolate? It's the one thing I can cook without incident, as you well know."

And Kurt is willing to be distracted, for all that he's nearly an adult and hot chocolate shouldn't sound like such an inviting prospect. "Please," he says, instead of, _Your old friend––who is he?_ , because he's not sure he wants to know, and it's easier, it is, to put the medal in his pocket and be convinced he was imagining its brief escape attempt, to drink his chocolate in the kitchen and laugh at nothing with the Professor, to let sleeping dogs lie and still waters run deep––undisturbed.

 

4\. ROGUE - 1982

It happens unexpectedly, a fluke.

She gets a splinter from helping Logan move the rickety, weathered picnic tables across the grounds (which doesn't even make sense, she realizes later––even if Logan couldn't pick them up and twirl them around on his little finger, it's not like they're hurting for telekinetic abilities or superhuman strength or anything––but it was a nice afternoon until one of the tables slipped and bit her hand all up) and has to wave him away when he runs over to her, brow furrowed. Watching someone like Logan rush to do anything should be funny, but splinter's gone right through her glove and actually hurts like––

"Bet that stings like a bitch," Logan says, tipping a grin at her.

Rogue huffs and hits him with the gloved back of her free hand, waving him aside.

"You need me to walk you back?" he asks, strangely serious underneath the shit-eating grin.

"Nah," she says, and offers him a smile back, one a little warmer than she means to give. The air fizzes between them, but she brings her hurt hand in close to her and carefully doesn't think about it. "I'm okay. You keep on moving tables, like a good little carpenter ant."

"Hey," he calls as she retreats, "I can carry more than three hundred times my body weight, fuck you very much!"

The splinter itself isn't especially deep when she works her glove off in one of the downstairs bathrooms, only a bit ragged, but removing all the pieces is kind of delicate work when she's working with pilfered eyebrow pluckers and her non-dominant hand. She's on her way back outside, plastering a flimsy Hello Kitty Band-Aid to the center of her palm, when she runs across the Professor––literally runs into him, in fact, in a spectacularly embarrassing pratfall that ends with her on her back in the hallway and him peering down at her worriedly. "Are you quite all right?" he asks, offering a hand to help her get up.

"Oh, I'm good," Rogue answers, "maybe a little, uh, dazed," and takes his hand without thinking about it, lifting herself to her feet with just enough time to to register _glove off, Band-Aid a point of friction against the professor's fingers_ before everything––snaps.

"Shit, shit!" she yells, hardly noticing the curse as she snatches her hand back. It was a bare few seconds, something she can usually get away with, but how could she have been so clumsy in the first place, how could she––her head aches for a moment with its blasted-open awareness, a rolodex of memories shuffling straight into her hindbrain, and she shudders. It's always worse when she's got her guard down.

"Rogue," she hears, "Rogue," and hones in on it, struggling to pay attention.

It only lasts for a minute, maybe two, but that's time enough for it to get weird. Professor X is, of course, never left floundering, only distantly kind in the way that suggests he's doing it as much for her as for himself, but she's got the remnants of a bittersweet ache on her tongue even after he's restored, a twenty-year anniversary she doesn't know what to do with.

"You doing okay, Professor?" she asks, cautious.

"Of course," he answers, looking calmer than he must feel. "But I must ask the same of you, are you quite all right? I know accidents can hurt all the more, sometimes––"

"Yeah, I'm fine," she says, but she's not, she's reeling, she's got to leave, go somewhere she can breathe. She's not living the memory anymore, but its bas-relief on her brain–– _beach, gunmetal, despair, something indefinable that's overwhelming and desperate_ ––is sharp, distinct with its newness. "I'll just head back out."

"Ah, yes, Logan said yesterday," says the Professor, "do go and help."

She doesn't run.

By the time she finds him, the picnic tables have all been set down in their new formation and he's sitting in the cold grass, scoring the dirt with his fingernails. The omnipresent cigar is nowhere to be seen for once, and she breathes in his familiar sight, his back to her. There's an answering flicker from somewhere in the depths behind her ribcage, something she recognizes with a sudden and terrible certainty: though much fainter, it's nearly identical to the horrific longing that had traced over the Professor's beach-memory.

But Rogue––Marie––has always been good at pushing things away when she needs them to be gone, so she focuses intensely on the heavy muscles of Logan's upper arms underneath his jacket, the wonderful breadth of him, the way he pretends to be surprised when she puts her hands on his shoulders, his sidelong grin. "You finished without me?" she asks, pouting.

"Why not? I'm not an ant, I don't need a line behind me to do what needs doing," he says; but it's not mean-spirited, and she refrains from calling his bluff when he pulls out a grubby, ashen stub, and they sit there, basking in a job well done.

 

5\. LOGAN - 1999

It's New Year's Eve and this is getting seriously old.

For fuck's sake, they're practically in the middle of a battle and he's got a huge distracting whiff of pheromones to the face. No one's fighting yet, but it's only a matter of time: that's always how these things work, a little posturing, a little frankly unnecessary monologuing, then a whole shit ton of mutant blood.

Logan sniffs again, instinct; the air is stunningly cold, like ice-shards in the bronchioles, but he keeps looking. He knows the X-Men intimately, and it's not any of them, or not any of them alone, too sour, like milk that's gone bad and sat around for forty years. Usually when he smells this particular combination of sex and longing and fear, he's too busy kicking Juggernaut in the balls and/or going for Sabretooth's throat to pay any real attention, but for once he's going to use Magneto's goddamn superiority complex to his advantage.

He turns a little to the side, not quick enough to draw anyone's attention, just enough to facilitate his nose. It's not Mystique, or mostly not, anyway; she's usually got something weird going on when they're keyed up like this, a little battle lust and a little heartbreak, but he figures every shape she can adopt has its own complicated chemistry and frankly he doesn't give two shits about it if it's not going to save his ass in a fight, so. The point is, it's not her.

The good thing about the Brotherhood is that most of the people who are on it are––well––Magneto's a smart guy and everything, but where he's obviously fueled by his crazypants ideology (god, he needs to stop listening to Rogue), his followers tend to really just like fucking shit up. This particular smell is a little too complex for someone like, say, the Toad. Seriously. Who the fuck even calls themselves the Toad? That's just asking to be mocked.

So he sniffs once again under the guise of rolling his shoulders, loosening them up for whatever's coming next, closes his eyes and just breathes, and when he opens them again he's got them in his line of sight and...oh no, no, no, no, this is not how this supposed to go, what the actual _fuck_ , this is ridiculous, because of course it's centered on Magneto and Xavier, circling around each other, faces impassive, the smell anything but, and yet now that it's clicked into place, how could it be anything else?

Logan tunes in, then, briefly. Magneto's going off on the same old buzzword-y speech about mutant supremacy, though, and when you've heard it once, you've heard it a thousand times. Who cares? Mystique's looking rapt, but she always did have as big a hard-on for the ideas behind it all as Magneto obviously does.

And as (not that Logan really wants to think about him having a hard-on, but––) as Xavier does, now that he thinks about it. Jesus fucking Christ.

This whole time, years upon years gone and gallons of blood and tears wasted on hate, and if their two intrepid leaders would just shut up about their ideas and _get a fucking room_ , none of it would be happening.

He's not sure he can hold himself back from saying anything about the stupidity of the entire situation when Mystique lets out a growl and shifts, spiky, ready for action, and the tension in the air ratchets up. Wolverine steps out from where Logan was standing, ready for a fight.

Fuck feelings, he thinks, his claws and muscles readying in tandem, waiting to tear at anyone who gets in his way. This is what really counts.

 

HANK MCCOY - 2013

Hank finds the Professor’s old black rook tucked away in a corner in his private lab, dusty behind a stack of yellowing test results from––he squints, and winces––from, it looks like, 1971.

Admittedly, yes, there’s a bit of a backlog he should really get to sorting one of these days, but he’s only one man, and over the past twenty years he’s had more personal responsibilities than he knows what to do with, never mind professional concerns like mapping out the skeleton of the mutant genome or turning a token U.N. position into one approaching influential. He thinks he can be forgiven a little disorganization.

He puts the rook in a side pocket of his briefcase so he won’t forget to take it to the Mansion when he heads out there this weekend and turns back to the cabinet. “Right,” he says aloud, looking at the shelves, “if I were Sean’s latest spectrogram, I’d be––” and then realizes the obvious answer is

He nearly doesn’t make it to Westchester, he gets so caught up in the formant analysis––there’s a really intriguing velar pinch that he thinks might be worth investigating––but at eleven AM on Saturday his stomach growls and he realizes it’s been nearly twenty-four hours since he last ate, and that maybe he should remove himself from his lab.

Part of getting older, Hank has found, is being forced to take care of oneself, or at least finding friends who will do some of that for you.

The trip isn’t too bad, just miles of cheerfully mindless highway and intermittently adjusting the radio, which hasn’t been the same since Tony Stark borrowed the car unexpectedly last year; it tends to tune itself to obnoxious metal stations (or 104.3 during Get the Led Out) when Hank’s not paying close enough attention, as he really prefers WQXR.

The afternoon light is golden, highlighting X-Mansion’s weird balance of austerely ornate architecture as he parks the car and goes inside. It’s as loud inside as usual––one of the prices of a dozen or more teenagers in one place at any one time––but it’s a comforting, familiar kind of loudness, one that speaks of contentment rather than the brutal percussive of attack, so he heads on down to the kitchen to make an unusual afternoon pot of coffee and maybe rustle up the ingredients to a sandwich.

He’s midway through balancing ham, turkey, and lettuce in alternating layers when he hears footsteps behind him, and the telltale hum that experience has taught him comes from every piece of metal in the immediate area vibrating slightly, yearning towards their master.

“Erik,” he says, cordially enough, as joins Hank in the kitchen; the air will never be entirely clear between them, but Magneto has proven himself enough times since his turn that hysterical caution is no longer his first reaction.

“Hank,” he says, equally civil, and then, “May I take some of that coffee when it’s done?”

“Of course,” Hank agrees, feeling like he needs to justify his presence in the face of his discomfort. “I just came up to get away from the lab, you know how it is. How’s training and, uh, everything?”

Erik shrugs. He’s as whipcord powerful as ever, but the set of his shoulders is more relaxed than Hank’s ever seen them. “Fine. The usual; you remember, the young need to be pushed. Charles wants to do so gently, which is acceptable at times, but sometimes they need more of a––” He gestures, and the ring he’s taken to wearing on his left hand glints under the overhead light. “Happily, I’m here to provide it.”

“Happily,” Hank repeats, and pours them both mugs. Erik sets out another one, says, “Charles,” without further explanation; Hank, of course, fills it.

As Erik is heading back to wherever he and the Professor have set up shop––the study, Hank assumes, though it’s just forty-year-old habit that makes him think it––Hank remembers the rook in his bag. “Wait,” he says, and digs it out. “Before I forget, I found that the other day; it’s the Professor’s. Would you mind taking it to him?”

Erik takes the rook, his fingers light and surprisingly gentle––wondering, Hank thinks. “Thank you,” he says. “I’m sure he’d be happy to have this back. He’s been missing it.”

“Of course,” Hank says, and watches him leave, biting into his sandwich with relish.


End file.
